The Tendency of the Daily Mail: Hate-filled Homophobia.

Some readers may be aware that my old mucker the Moai and I used to run a blog called The Daily Mail Tendency. It was dedicated to showing just how awful that rag is. Unfortunately, we simply could not keep up with all of their ignorance and hate-mongering. In fact, most days it was next to impossible to choose which article to focus on. Yet The Daily Mail has surpassed itself. It has published an article so filled with ignorance, hate and an utter lack of anything even approaching logic that I just have to comment on it - albeit here rather than on the Tendency. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the now famous Jan Moir article on Stephen Gately's death. You can tell just how awful it is going to be by the title: A strange, lonely and troubling death . . .

The news of Stephen Gately's death was deeply shocking. It was not just that another young star had died pointlessly.

It isn't often that a death really has a point. In fact, I struggle to think of any occasion when a death truly had a point. Except, you know, for suicide bombers. Who die to make their point.

Through the recent travails and sad ends of Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and many others, fans know to expect the unexpected of their heroes - particularly if those idols live a life that is shadowed by dark appetites or fractured by private vice.

You'd be forgiven, on reading that paragraph, for thinking that Jackson and Ledger died in exactly the same way. Of course, they didn't. They didn't die in the same way or even at the same age. And it is a truly base mind that sees lives of talent - that Ledger and Jackson undeniably led - in terms of their tragic demises.

There are dozens of household names out there with secret and not-so-secret troubles, or damaging habits both past and present.

Robbie, Amy, Kate, Whitney, Britney; we all know who they are. And we are not being ghoulish to anticipate, or to be mentally braced for, their bad end: a long night, a mysterious stranger, an odd set of circumstances that herald a sudden death.

Actually, you really are being ghoulish if you are waiting for someone to die. Jan Moir, you aren't so much rubbernecking to watch the car crash, you are say on the side of the motorway willing the car crash to happen. You are like an ineffectual Carrie White, wanting disaster to happen to someone else to make you feel better. Their bad end is your prurient, odious spectator sport.

In the morning, a body has already turned cold before the first concerned hand reaches out to touch an icy celebrity shoulder. It is not exactly a new storyline, is it?

What, famous people dying in the night? Of course it isn't a new story. Gately isn't the first celebrity to die in the night! And it isn't a "storyline" either. It is a personal tragedy for Gately's family, for fuck's sake.

In fact, it is rather depressingly familiar. But somehow we never expected it of him. Never him. Not Stephen Gately.

No, of course not. No-one ever expected Gately to die. He was always going to be the immortal member of Boyzone.

In the cheerful environs of Boyzone, Gately was always charming, cute, polite and funny.

A founder member of Ireland's first boy band, he was the group's co-lead singer, even though he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk.

I look forward to Jan Moir's debut single, where she proves that she is the greatest singer in the world, ever. Maybe she can release I Will Survive, in tribute to her now hopefully moribund career. I mean, even if you thought Gately was the worst singer ever (he wasn't) then this isn't really the time to have a pop at him as a vocalist, is it?

He was the Posh Spice of Boyzone, a popular but largely decorous addition.

I hope Posh Spice sues. I would.

Gately came out as gay in 1999 after discovering that someone was planning to sell a story revealing his sexuality to a newspaper.

Although he was effectively smoked out of the closet, he has been hailed as a champion of gay rights, albeit a reluctant one.

Right, so, Gately was smoked out of the closet by someone trying to sell his story to a newspaper. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but Moir works for a newspaper that would have no issue with buying a story about a star's private life. Besides, the clue is in the word "private". That is what Gately's private life - and death - should have been. Fucking private.

At the time, Gately worried that the revelations might end his ultra-mainstream career as a pin-up, but he received an overwhelmingly positive response from fans. In fact, it only made them love him more.

Good on the fans.

And given Jan Moir's odious, homophobic response - sadly typical of the piss awful rag she writes for - to Gately's death, I can entirely understand why Gately wanted to keep his private life private.

In 2006, Gately entered into a civil union with internet businessman Andrew Cowles, who had been introduced to him by mutual friends Elton John and David Furnish.

Last week, the couple were enjoying a holiday together in their apartment in Mallorca before their world was capsized.

To summarise - Gately was part of a couple who met through friends, and sadly he died on holiday with his love.

All the official reports point to a natural death, with no suspicious circumstances. The Gately family are - perhaps understandably - keen to register their boy's demise on the national consciousness as nothing more than a tragic accident.

Given there is no evidence - unless Moir has some sort of unlikely form of divine omniscience - that this was anything other than a natural death, of course Gately's family are keen to register it as a tragic accident. What the fuck else would they do? Why in their moment of terrible, jarring grief would they want to add further, false drama to this sad death?

Even before the post-mortem and toxicology reports were released by the Spanish authorities, the Gatelys' lawyer reiterated that they believed his sudden death was due to natural causes.

Whereas Jan Moir - who seems to know fuck all about this incident beyond her own pathetic yet glaring prejuidices - seems to think that her opinion counts for more that Gately's lawyer before the post-mortem and toxicology reports are released. Fucking hell, she must have some awesome sources. Or else she is just making this up as she goes along.

But, hang on a minute. Something is terribly wrong with the way this incident has been shaped and spun into nothing more than an unfortunate mishap on a holiday weekend, like a broken teacup in the rented cottage.

Oh. My. God. Could the deeply held homophobia been any clearer? A rented cottage? A rented cottage? I actually feel a bit sick at the levels of ignorance, malice and spite spat out by Moir in that sentence. It is utterly, utterly odious. Something is terribly wrong. With Jan Moir.

Consider the way it has been largely reported, as if Gately had gently keeled over at the age of 90 in the grounds of the Bide-a-Wee rest home while hoeing the sweet pea patch.

The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.

Yeah, of course, because no person in their thirty-third year has ever died before. In fact, people only ever die when they are old. The sad fact is, for people who live in the real fucking world (somewhere Moir only seems to have the most limited connection with), people do fall asleep in their thirties and never wake up again.

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered.

How does Moir know the death was not a natural one? Really, how does she know? Because logically, she knows no more than the next person. The only reason why she might think this death wasn't natural is because - as this article shows - she thinks Gately's life was not natural. Because she is a nasty little homophobe.

And I think if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy.

After a night of clubbing, Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment. It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards.

If we were going to be honest, we'd - Moir included - have to confess we all know fuck all about this death. But that would rather ruin Moir's article, wouldn't it?

And it is disrespectful to assume. I could assume that Moir is disappointed that Gately was gay because she fancied him and wanted him all for her own. But I won't assume that. Because it is disrespectful.

Cowles and Dochev went to the bedroom together while Stephen remained alone in the living room.

What happened before they parted is known only to the two men still alive. What happened afterwards is anyone's guess.

In other words, Moir is forced to confirm that she has no idea what happened before or after Gately died. But that is not going to stop this fucking pathetic creature painting those events in the worst way possible, filled with pregnant innuendo.

A post-mortem revealed Stephen died from acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid on his lungs.

Gately's family have always maintained that drugs were not involved in the singer's death, but it has just been revealed that he at least smoked cannabis on the night he died.

Nevertheless, his mother is still insisting that her son died from a previously undetected heart condition that has plagued the family.

Right, so Gately died on a build up of fluid in his lungs that may have been a genetic complaint - according to his mother, who probably knows about such things. Yet Moir knows better than his mother, and throws the word cannabis in there for to terrify The Daily Mail readership who equate cannabis with something lethal like smallpox. For those of us who are a little more rational, let me posit a relevant question - what the fuck does cannabis have to do with Gately's death?

Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.

Really? How? I mean, no-one ever died in a heterosexual marriage, did they? And every heterosexual marriage is beyond reproach. What a load of fucking crap. This death shows nothing other than a man died who was married to another man.

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.

It is true. Not everyone is like George Michael. I think we should all be grateful for Moir pointing out this beyond obvious comment. Where would we be without morons like Moir to point out the fucking obvious?

And same-sex relationships are the same as heterosexual relationships. Except bigots like Moir hate the former, and mindlessly venerate the latter.

Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened.

What the hell does the tragic suicide of McGee had to do with the natural death of Gately? Oh, they were both gay. Not that Moir is focussed on their sexual orientation, of course.

It is important that the truth comes out about the exact circumstances of his strange and lonely death.

And Moir's article does one hell of a lot to cloud whatever truth will emerge about Gately's death, with it's mix of unfounded innuendo and crass, ignorant assumptions.

As a gay rights champion, I am sure he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine.

As a gay rights champion (if he was actually one), I'm fairly sure Gately would want to scream obscenities in Moir's face for being such a maladjusted, hate-filled wankstain. And what would people emulate from Gately's "glamorous routine"? Going on holiday? Dying? Because most people are going to do both at some point. Including Moir.

For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see.

Or to put it another way, the "ooze" of the homosexual life.

Can anyone really see Moir writing this heinous article or The Daily Mail printing what is a vicious attack on a recently deceased man if that man wasn't gay? This is slandering a dead man. It is utterly, compellingly, and nauseously wrong against every available parameter. This article sums up entirely why The Daily Mail Tendency existed, and just how fucking awful that paper is.